Heartland and Hypocrisy; Gleick And The Real Climate Debate

Noted hydroclimatologist and author Peter Gleick has spent his adult life measuring the impact of climate change on water resources. Last night, he took one for us all when he put his career in jeopardy by revealing that it was he who acquired and leaked documents to DeSmogBlog and others showing how the Heartland Institute – one of the loudest voices in the climate-change-denial choir – gets and spends its money.

In so doing, he delivered a massive body blow to the denialsphere and moved the world closer to finding a solution to the climate-change challenge. That’s because his find exposes yet another piece of the denial machine that has been assembled over the past two decades to discredit legitimate climate science. It renders their utterances irrelevant, and provides yet more evidence that Heartland’s activities aren’t those of a charity, but of a PR agency acting on behalf of a few deep-pocketed paymasters who stand to lose if the world acts to mitigate climate change.

Heartland responded first with holier-than-though threats against the media for posting the memos:

“It was an outrageous violation of ethics and the law,” wrote Heartland president Joseph Bast, in an e-mail threatening legal action against media outlets that make the documents available for download. “It doesn’t matter what you believe about climate change, or if you are a liberal or a conservative. You ought to understand and denounce this unethical behavior.”

It then attacked Gleick:

“Gleick’s crime was a serious one,” wrote spokesperson Jim Lakely in an e-mail to reporters this morning. “The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety… A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.”

This comes after Heartland also threatened to launch an investigation into a retired US Air Force Colonel Gary Wamsley who, in a private e-mail to Bast, criticized Heartland’s efforts to fund climate denial in the schools.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the Colonel wrote. “The United States already has a problem in keeping up with the rest of the world in science education, and now you want to play a role in further destroying our nation as well as our planet. You are a traitor to your own country. I did not spend 30 years in the military to protect the likes of you.”

Bast responded by attacking the allegedly-forged memo – as if that were the only smoking gun in this nasty affair, which it isn’t – or as if it really were an obvious forgery – which it also isn’t. He ignored all of the other memos, and then tried to scare the retired Colonel, who responded by posting the entire exchange on his web site.

“Since your letter is threatening, I’ve forwarded it to our legal counsel, forensics team, and the FBI,” wrote Bast. “It is important that you not delete the email from your sent file, or any other emails you may have exchanged with other people while preparing it, since this could be evidence in criminal and civil cases.”

If Heartland were an innocent victim in all of this – if it were, say, a climate scientist who found his mails hacked and his character attacked just because his findings weren’t the ones certain industries wanted to hear – well, we could understand the vitriol. But this isn’t an innocent scientist or even anything resembling a research organization. It’s a group that cheered and jeered back in 2009, and again in 2011, after an e-mail server at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit was hacked, and the mails were twisted and distorted to look like something they never really were.

Let’s examine these two incidents side-by-side, and the science that each purports to represent.

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Surely you jest. Are you really holding up Gleick’s actions as admirable and Mann’s science as credible? I can understand why Dr. Jonathon Jones (Oxford physics professor) refers to the current state of climate science as pathological.

Anyone who looks at the science will find there are many open issues, and that predictions of climate outside historical ranges are being undermined. Perhaps you are not aware of the recent mainstream scientific conference that asked the question “Why has an acceleration of sea level rise not been observed in the altimetry era?”. There have been many predictions of catastrophic sea levels but most evidence points to no acceleration in sea level rise.

As for the disparagement of the Heartland Institute, anyone who wants to see the scientific backing and thousands of scientific papers showing that the IPCC has been overconfident (at least) in their predictions should see their latest report at http://nipccreport.org/reports/2011/2011report.html . I suggest you add this book to your club’s reading list (and of course read the cited scientific papers).

You make the serious mistake of accusing Michael Mann of not producing credible science, but your remark is entirely unfounded. Mann is one of the world’s leading scientists on climate change and his work has been supported by masses of evidence.

You then offer us a link to a website produced from funding by Heartland that proports to show us ‘evidence’ of IPCC wrong-doing. The report’s authors are: Craig D. Idso, Robert Carter, and S. Fred Singer, all of whom are discredited and listed as on the Heartland payroll.

Yes, Geoff. Gleick’s actions are admirable and Mann’s science is credible. In fact, Gleick shouldn’t be apologizing; he should be lining up for a medal.

I haven’t read the Heartland report you recommend because I saw who the authors are – and, thanks to Gleick, I now see how they get paid and what they get paid to do.

We have, over the centuries, evolved a process for understanding reality. It’s called science, and it’s not perfect, but it’s served us well. It includes a vetting process that has proven adept at absorbing new ideas and discarding those that don’t work.

The books I’m using utilize this system; the report you’re recommending discards it.

Pr. Jones work is in atomic and laser physics which has little to nothing to do with climate change science. Whatever research you have, it has nothing to do with the issues at hand. The Heartland Institute is funded by the carbon emissions industry and they fund efforts to raise questions where there are none.

My opinion of Mann’s work is shared by many serious scientists globally. Just to give one review, I suggest you read the paper last year by McShane and Wyner in The Annals of Applied Statistics (Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 5-44). You can see in their study they found that random noise was as effective as the proxies processed by the Mann algorithm in predicting temperatures. As they put it “random series that are independent of global temperature are as effective or more effective than the proxies at predicting global annual temperatures in the instrumental period. Again, the proxies are not statistically significant when compared to sophisticated null models”. Do you know what that means?

This is not even taking into account Mann leaving out 40 years worth of data when he purports to show that his proxies correlate to temperatures in the thermometer era. If you are truly interested in understanding Mann’s work, you should read and digest the The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford (which has already been recommended by the book club).

In his more recent papers, Mann has used a proxy upside down from the orientation proposed by the author of the original study developing the proxy.

Of course, showing that Mann’s science is unsupportable in now way “disproves” global warming. It simply means that anyone wanting to show temperature reconstructions of the past 1000 years cannot validly rely on his methods.

Regarding the scientists who edited the NIPCC report, what makes you think of them as “discredited”. I can guaranty you that many knowledgeable scientists do not you share your view. Are you aware of Dr. Singer’s recent scientific papers showing that tropical hotspots predicted by climate models are not being seen in the actual measurement data? This has now been accepted (after years of disagreement) by such mainsteam scientists as Dr. Ben Santer. I was fortunate to hear a talk last year organized by the Royal Institute of Meteorology in The Netherlands where Dr. Singer was able to present his findings. He was treated with respect, even by those who did not agree with his views. This is the way science should progress. (I’d be happy to reference the scientific papers if you have not read them).

It’s pretty clear you don’t like what the Heartland Institute stands for, but how does that impact real science? Would it matter if the report had been written by the president of Exxon Mobil ( or Koch Industries if you prefer) or Greenpeace? The reports cites thousands of scientific papers in mainstream climate journals. I would say that anyone who reads the actual scientific literature (and not summaries) would realize that the IPCC conclusions are largely a house of cards. Are you familiar with Dr. Trenberth’s paper in the journal Science on Tracking Earth’s Energy (16 APRIL 2010 VOL 328)? You may know that Dr. Trenberth is an IPCC lead author. In that paper, he shows that measured heat in the oceans is far lower than predicted by climate models. More recently he has hypothesized that the “missing heat” is in the deep ocean (where it cannot be measured). This strikes many scientists as implausible.

Where do you think the “missing heat” is lurking? Many scientists have come to the conclusion that there is no “missing heat” but that the models have overstated warming. What do you think?

I would leave you with one last reference. You may have seen the paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by Dr. Judith Curry (head of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech, and Dr. Peter Webster of the same university, who is the incoming president of the atmospheric science committee of the American Geophysical Union) where they concluded “…The large uncertainties in both the observations and model simulations of the spectral amplitude of natural variability precludes a confident detection of anthropogenically forced climate change against the background of natural internal climate variability”. (BAMS, Dec, 2011, p. 1686-7).

Do you have a scientific basis for disagreeing with their conclusion or just appeals to authority?

See my comments to Bluecloud. Do you have a scientific reason for ignoring the conclusion of Prof. Wegman who concluded in a report to Congress that the Mann conclusions were not statistically valid? (You may recall that Dr. Gerry North, who was head of an NAS panel reviewing climate reconstructions testified under oath that he agreed with the conclusion).

You don’t seem to want to look at the NIPCC report, which is a selection and review of scientific papers (in the same way that the IPCC reports are reviews). Perhaps you would just prefer the citations of the scientific papers directly. I’d be happy to supply hundreds of scientific references which gravely call into question the IPCC conclusions. Thousands of independent scientists have reached the conclusion indicated above by Dr. Curry and Dr. Webster.

Perhaps you saw the letter in the Wall St. Journal yesterday by some of the most renowned scientists in the world, who have concluded by their independent investigation that CO2 is not having the effect predicted by the IPCC. They rightly say don’t take their word for it, read the literature yourself. I recommend this approach.

Coming back to Gleick, if you think his actions were ethical and laudable, you’re welcome to your opinion, but I think most people will disagree. (At any rate they were illegal). I guess that’s why he is no longer the head of the AGU ethics committee and is not being given a “hero” award by the AGU.

I am 100% supportive of the scientific method, but if you ignore some views you are very likely to have a distorted perspective. I wish you success in your further efforts to learn.

@Geoff, I was being deliberately provocative in my first post on Gleick — my point is that his actions didn’t come out of the blue. If Heartland wants to play by the rules, they should play by the rules — especially given what’s at stake. Gleick has outed himself and will face the consequences. He is not hiding in the shadows the way the East Anglia hackers are.

You’re also claiming to respect scientific method while peppering the page with outlier ideas that haven’t stood up to scrutiny by peers. The NIPCC report is a joke. As Reisman points out, it is a string of facts out of context — which is also what these blog posts degenerate into. That is why I am starting up this blook club.

Read your bio at your foundation site. You seem like an interesting and bright individual.

I looked at your defense of the hockey stick. You say “Many denialists have claimed that the Hockey stick was wrong and they can prove it because a congressional subcommittee said it was wrong. Is there anyone on the planet that doesn’t think a congressional subcommittee can be wrong?”. It was not a congressional subcommittee that said it was wrong. It was a report issued to a congressional subcommittee by a panel. The head of that panel was one of the most recognized statisticians in the US, and at that time he was head of the National Academy of Sciences committee on applied statistics. If you have any scientific criticism of his work I’d be happy to see it, but as I mentioned, his conclusion was endorsed under oath by Dr. Gerry North, who is a widely respected climatologist. On your website, you cite the blog Real Climate, which was partially founded and is suppored by Michael Mann, so most people would not consider them non-partisan. You do not cite a single scientific paper that deals with the published criticisms I mentioned.

You show a number of reconstructions, but natually you do not show others that show a different story. Could I recommend Ljungqvist (2012, Climate of the Past – available free on line). I do not claim by any means this is the end of the story, but if you have been following the liturature closely you will see that the uncertainty of past climates is still large (as it is for future climates).

You do not cite a single fact “out of context” or quote any “cherry picked considerations” in the NIPCC report. If you have any specifics they could be intelligently discussed.

You seem to indicate you believe that the head of atmospheric sciences at a major institution (and author of books on thermodynamics) and the incoming head of the atmospheric science committee of the American Geophysical Union do not understand radiative physics sufficiently to take them into account when concluding that AGW is uncertain. Is that really your position? Objections were raised against their conclusions by Prof. Hegerl, but Curry and Webster have answered them. If you have a scientific argument please make it, but to dismiss them as “missing the boat” will not convince many people who look to the scientific method for answers.